When Fly Leaf returned from her trip to the plumber, Thorax made absolutely no mention of the visit from the crystal guards or the poster they had given him and had subsequently destroyed. In fact, he barely made reference to it to Spike, downplaying the situation, not wanting to worry the dragon. But Thorax himself was very worried about the matter, and wished there was something he could do about it. His first thought was possibly sneaking about town at night and removing as many of the posters circulating about as he could, but realized that wouldn’t help much; the guards would only send out more upon noticing the disappearance of the originals. Plus, it would probably only clue them in that their targets were in fact in Vanhoover, because who else would take the time to remove the incriminating posters? It ultimately wouldn’t help.
His second thought was to maybe try and keep Fly Leaf in the shop as much as possible, and that way minimize Fly Leaf’s chances of seeing the poster at the very least. So whenever she declared she needed to run out of the shop to go do something, Thorax started volunteering to run the errand for her, so she wouldn’t have to. Fly Leaf was initially fairly impressed by this, but it only lasted for about a day as Fly Leaf, an independent mare, didn’t want Thorax doing everything for her (as it was quickly becoming), and finally put her hoof down when Thorax offered to run out to get her lunch for her instead of her doing it and politely asked that Thorax let her do some things for herself still.
Thus unable to do anything to stop the distributing of the posters of Spike through Vanhoover except within their shop and unable to keep Fly Leaf from going out where she could possibly see one, Thorax was left to having to sit tight and pray that everything would still work out, his fears never coming to light. And for the first couple of days after the guards had visited the shop, it seemed his prayers were answered as business went on as normal. Customers came, customers went. The store opened, the store closed. And still no pony seemed to make the feared connection that the so-called “criminals” the crystal guard was searching for were right here in front of them. Their frankly astonishing luck continued to hold out.
Spike at least seemed to be in good spirits about it, helped by the fact that he was making good progress on reorganizing the storage in back. By the following week he was already about halfway done, and already all of them were seeing the vast improvement his new organization system was bringing. Even Thorax was quite impressed by it, but no one was more impressed than Fly Leaf, who was utterly amazed how Spike seemed to be finding ways to fit the stacks of boxes into precisely the same space yet appearing to take up less of it, while still being easy to find.
“Where did you learn to organize like this?” Fly asked in amazement once while talking with Spike about his progress on the project.
Spike took on a faraway look. “It sort of rubbed off on me from someone I used to know,” he explained simply.
Meanwhile, Fly was finally making progress of her own on the second floor’s bathroom sink. Having gotten the new plumber in to work on it over the weekend, the plumber seemed to finally work out whatever it was everyone else had missed and got the sink’s faulty knob repaired at long last…and this time it was staying repaired. Fly waited a day or two after the repair so to put the sink through its paces nonetheless, insuring the repair was indeed going to be permanent this time. By the following Tuesday she was at last satisfied that the knob was going to stay repaired, and slipped out late that morning to run and pay off the bill for the repair real quick before the store’s usual afternoon rush arrived. She left Thorax in charge while she was gone, and the disguised changeling expected her to not be gone long.
Instead, she didn’t get back until nearly a half-hour later, more than double the amount of time he was expecting, and by which point the afternoon rush had started in earnest, leaving Thorax somewhat overwhelmed as he started having to pull double-duty. “That took you longer than expected, Miss Fly,” he noted with relief when a somewhat annoyed looking Fly Leaf reentered the shop, in time for the rush of customers to have thinned to more tolerable levels for the moment.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Fly Leaf apologized, trotting to go return her pocketbook in the back. “I got held up against my will on the way back. Everything still went alright here while I was out though?”
“Well, I survived it at least,” Thorax responded earnestly which got a chuckle out of Fly. “What held you up, though? Some complication with the plumber and paying the bill?”
“Oh no, that all went perfectly fine,” Fly responded with the wave of her hoof. “No, what happened was that after I finished with that and was walking back here, I got stopped by those pesky crystal pony guards that have been running about town lately, who wanted to ask a whole bunch of questions on whether or not I knew anything about their little search for crooks.”
Thorax froze, and glanced over at Fly out of the corner of his eye. “What did you tell them?” he asked, worried.
“The truth, of course,” Fly answered curtly. “I don’t know anything.”
Thorax was quiet for a moment, letting Fly vanish in back to put away her things and not speaking again until she emerged again. “…and what did they tell you?” he asked next, in the most innocent manner he could think of.
“Just the details of who they’re searching for,” Fly responded simply, her attention more focused on correcting a detail on a shelf she was passing, “A changeling and a dragon accomplice. It seems they’re following a possible lead now that appears to suggest that what might have been the two had been spotted in this neighborhood of town before. Since they had already asked if I lived in this same part of town, they were asking if I had seen any sign that could back this claim up. Of course, I told them I hadn’t seen anything of the such.”
Thorax mulled on this for a moment. So far, everything still seemed to be fine. But there was one detail that was still nagging him. “Why such a delay then, if you didn’t have much to tell them?”
“Because they had plenty to tell me,” Fly griped, moving on to another set of shelves, checking to make sure the items on it were all tidy. “They wouldn’t let me go until they had given me the whole spiel about who these two runaways were, what they are accused of doing, and why those crystal ponies thought they might be in Vanhoover of all places. Of course, they conceded that Vanhoover wasn’t the only town they’ve been searching in the area, which is a bit of a relief to me if only because it means we aren’t the only ones that have to deal with it. Although they seemed confident that if their crooks were anywhere in the region, they were probably here in Vanhoover.”
Thorax fidgeted with his disguised grey hooves for a second, watching as Fly Leaf cycled through the shelves of her store, insuring everything was in order. “So…they’re just leaving no stone unturned then, so to speak?” he reasoned, thinking that would be what a perfectly normal pony who was certainly not the changeling the guards were looking for and on the run would say at this point.
Fly chuckled at Thorax’s description of it, approaching the front desk. “Basically, yes,” she agreed, turning her back to Thorax as she stopped to straighten a few books on a nearby shelf, “though that seems to entail getting the populace involved too. Heck, they even showed me a picture of the dragon they’re looking for, because they seemed convinced there was a high chance I might have seen him somewhere before.”
Thorax involuntarily jolted his hooves at this, banging one of them on the edge of the desk painfully. “You saw a picture?” he gasped with semi-concealed panic as he worked to shake off the pain of his aching hoof.
“Of the dragon, yes,” Fly repeated without looking away from what she was doing. “Apparently they’ve been distributing posters with the picture to businesses across town.” She suddenly glanced at Thorax. “Speaking of, have any posters been handed out here that you’ve seen? The guards seemed surprised to hear that I hadn’t seen or heard of any arriving in my shop.”
“No,” Thorax quickly lied, but it came out mildly squeaky, and when Fly gave him a puzzled look, the camouflaged changeling feared he was giving himself away.
But then Fly grinned and she stepped up to him. “Are you afraid someone’s going to confuse Spark for this fugitive dragon because he’s a dragon too?” she asked softly, placing a reassuring hoof on her employee and friend.
Thorax felt himself relax a little at the gesture. “More than you know,” he decided to admit, seeing no harm in saying that much.
Fly grinned and chuckled a little. “I understand,” she said. “You two are friends, after all, and no doubt you want to make sure he stays safe.” She gave him a playful nudge. “But I wouldn’t worry. If anyone was going to think that, I think somepony would’ve said something by now, so I don’t think that’s a deduction anybody’s going to make at this point.” She gave him a final pat and turned to walk off. “Besides, I told those guards straight up that I hadn’t seen specifically that dragon they’re looking for, and that none of my employees looked a thing like him.” She gave him a wink before trotting upstairs to check on things up there.
“Oh good,” Thorax breathed in a sigh of relief, the tension leaving him. But then Fly’s choice of words sank in a bit more fully, and he found himself gazing after the mare, mildly puzzled for a few moments, before he finally decided he was thinking too hard about it and pushed his puzzlement aside and got back to work.